


The Shadow of the Day

by Mohini



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton's Farm, Clint and Laura Barton's Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Natasha Romanov does not want the hug she probably needs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-09 05:13:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16443581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: She's not a child. She's never been a child. Those truths change nothing in the dark hours of the night.





	The Shadow of the Day

She startles awake nowhere near a decent amount of time after dropping her head to the pillow. Some mostly dormant part of her mind clocks it as nearing late morning. In Volgograd. She’s in New York, at Clint’s home with the kids down the hall and the scent of the organic cleaners Laura favors in the air and the time 7 hours reversed. Her mind goes there when she’s overdone, to the default setting of time and space burned into every synapse. If only she truly could go backwards, could move to the time before the memories of long ago came crashing into the foremost layer of her awareness and seared themselves there again.

Bruce is asleep, his breathing soft and even. She could wake him, but she can’t. There’s humility - or humanity, depending on which way she decides to spin it - and then there’s weakness. She struggles with the first, and knows she possesses far too much of the second, no matter the appearances she’s grown so skilled at projecting.

Long, long ago in the chill of training halls and nighttime ops, there was a man turned weapon that gave her pills and told her to rest. She obeyed him. She trusted him. As much as any operative trusts another one.  She misses him.  She shakes her head, hard, to stall that stream of thought out.

Clint. He’ll know what to do with her, how to wrench this manic energy and overwhelming unease back into control. She slips out of the bed, down the hall. The floor is cool beneath bare feet. It should be grounding. It makes her feel like a frightened child sneaking into the master bedroom in search of someone to make it all better.

Maybe that’s what she’s doing. It doesn’t matter. She inches the door open just enough to pass the threshold.

Clint, always as vigilant in sleep as she is despite his bumbling idiot persona, sits up before she makes it fully inside.  He pats the covers in front of him, and she goes where she’s told, climbing up and curling her legs beneath her. He doesn’t reach out to her, for which she is immeasurably grateful.  Earlier, in the quinjet, she needed his hands on her. Now, it would feel like imprisonment and she’s already trapped enough.

Laura stirs, rises on one elbow and looks blearily towards her. Probably expecting one of the kids, Natasha supposes, but when she sees that it’s Clint’s pet assassin she sits fully up. She reaches for the glass of water on the bedside table, extends it to Nat.

Trembling hands take the vessel, fearful of sloshing the water over the edges onto the quilt, surprised when it makes it to her lips without spilling out. She sips tentatively, realizes how parched her throat is, drains it and winces as her stomach cramps. She should know better. She never knows better. She hiccups, swallows down what wants to be a gag, shakes her head and presses her fist to her lips as she forces her body to accept the water and calm the fuck down. It works, and the water, though heavier than concrete in the pit of her stomach, stays where it’s been put.

Clint takes the cup from her when she is able to unclench her hand from around it, and still no one speaks, no one lays hands on the mess of overgrown child at the foot of the bed. Laura rises, goes to the closet and brings back an extra pillow, a blanket with rocket ships on its fuzzy surface. It’s obviously meant for actual children coming to their bed in the dark hours, but nighttime terrors are little different from youth to adulthood. They all leave the same need in their wake. Safety. Security. Warmth.  

The blanket barely covers her, but its warmth comes more from intent than reality anyway. Laura draws it up to her shoulders, tucks it in around her with soft, sure movements.  It should feel wrong on so many levels. She’s slept with Clint. He’s not a parent figure to her, never has been, but maybe, tonight, he’s protector enough to fill a role she never wanted anyone to have for her. Laura is a friend, as much as Nat ever considers anyone a friend. It feels like such imposition, to interrupt their rest with her childish hurts, but she can’t bring herself to move, to leave the foot of their bed where she’s safe and warm and maybe, a little bit, loved.

She’s not a child. Was never a child. Not really. Not like other people were. But she is exhausted, and still a little frightened of the shadows in her dreams, in her not dreams, in her. 

Her eyes slip closed and she drifts.

 

 


End file.
